When, as children, Pamela and her brother were separated by Eliphalet Fitch, they must have been terrified that they would never see each other again. Many separated families never did. But her brother’s enslaver kept him in the Boston area, and at some point, he and Pamela reconnected. We don’t know how they found and recognized each other, but we know that Pamela remembered some details from her childhood. The siblings likely confirmed each other’s identities by matching up their memories.

Like Pamela, Samuel Bean (as her brother was called by then) eventually regained his freedom. As a free man, he acquired land of his own on Belknap Street in Boston’s Sixth Ward, now part of Somerville. He lived there with his wife, Margaret Jackson Bean, and they had a number of free Black neighbors. On 5 April 1816, though, Samuel died of “lung fever,” or pneumonia. Margaret passed away the following January. Samuel’s death record notes that he was buried in Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, but no marker remains to indicate his resting place.

By 1818, Pamela, then in her mid-50s, was also a widow. (David’s death may have happened as early as the 1790s; there is no record of the date.) If living as a free Black person in Massachusetts during the early 19th century was hard, living as a free Black widow was even harder. Pamela’s brother and his wife had no children, and after their deaths, Pamela petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to declare her to be her brother’s sole surviving heir and allow her to inherit his land.

Though we have not uncovered a record of the General Court’s response to her petition, the fact that Pamela apparently lived out the rest of her life in Brighton suggests that she was never granted the rights to her brother’s land. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow that slavery deprived her of her relationship with her brother not once but twice.